Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/89

shall nourish the highest intellectual pursuits, unhindered by physical ills and unhampered by ignorant prejudice; a city, in short, in which the bodies of the inhabitants shall have become living temples of truth!

There will be no night in that city, since Truth is itself the eternal source of light, and her torch is never inverted.

MEXICAN ANTIQUITIES.

By RANDOLPH I. GEARE.

IN the southeast range of the National Museum at Washington is a collection of casts of Mexican statues, historical stones, and other figures of American antiquities, an examination of which alone is well worthy of a visit to the Museum. This collection was installed for exhibition by its owner, Señor Eufémio Abadiano, and was brought to Washington from New Orleans, where it had been on view at the Exposition in 1885. These casts are reproductions of precious specimens Teoyoamiqui, or Goddess of Death. in the possession of the National Museum of Mexico, and of monuments of immense value from various parts of that republic. Our attention was first called to the "Aztec Calendar Stone," which, according to Gama, is a calendar for that part of the year between the spring and autumnal equinox, showing the movements of the sun and the times at which should be celebrated the principal feasts of the nation. In the center are four rectangles which form a figure constituting the sign of Nahüi Ollin, and represents the four movements of the sun. The figures in the circle outside of these rectangles represent the twenty days into which the month was divided. The divisions of the day are shown by eight large angles. The stone served as a sun-dial, by means of which the times for ceremonies and sacrifices were ascertained daily. The original monument is believed to weigh twenty-one tons. Close by is the cast of the statue Teoyoamiqui, or Goddess of Death, about eight